1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates in general to computer software, and more particularly to a user interface software in a client-server network architecture.
2. Background Art
A client-server software system having a graphical user interface front-end and one or more back-end legacy systems are generally known in the information systems industries. World Wide Web (Web)-based online systems are also starting to emerge as the use of the Internet proliferates world wide. These Web-based online systems usually employ a Web browser displaying Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) pages as graphical user interface (GUI), and often include Java applets and Common Gateway Interface (CGI) programs for customer interaction. In these systems, however the retrieval from a given Uniform Resource Locator (URL) and display on the customer's screen are often performed on a page by page basis. That is, each page retrieved and displayed is independent of any previous or subsequent pages. Because each page is displayed and run independently of one another, components existing on a page are limited in their ability to communicate with other components existing on other pages. Moreover, there is no backbone architecture for managing and overseeing GUI when screen displays are presented as independent HTML pages. Additionally, the HTML pages and Java applets are usually confined to a Web browser within which they are running. Therefore, it is highly desirable to provide a Web-base GUI system which includes a backbone architecture for managing and enabling communications and interoperability among various processes or components comprising the GUI system, and at the same time provide some independence from the Web browser within which the GUI is running.
In conventional systems, a connection is made with a large legacy system via a dial-up connection from a customer owned personal computer or workstation. This connection frequently, although not always, emulates a terminal addressable by the legacy systems. The dial-up access requires custom software on the customer workstation to provide dial-up services, communication services, emulation and/or translation services and generally some resident custom form of the legacy application to interface with the midrange or mainframe computer running the legacy system.
There are several problems associated with the approach. First, the aforementioned software is very hardware dependent, requiring multiple versions of software compatible with each of a wide range of workstations customers generally have. Therefore, extensive inventory for distribution becomes necessary. If the customer hardware platform changes through an upgrade, the software licensing issues must be renegotiated. Moreover, installing the software generally requires an intensive effort on the customer and the software support team before any reliable and secure sessions are possible.
Secondly, dial-up, modem, and communications software interact with each other in many ways which are not always predictable to a custom application, requiring extensive trouble shooting and problem solving for an enterprise wishing to make the legacy system available to the customer, particularly where various telephone exchanges, dialing standards or signal standards are involved.
Thirdly, although more businesses are turning to the Internet to improve customer service and lower costs by providing Web-based support systems, when an enterprise wishes to make more than one system available to the customer, the custom application for one legacy system is not able to connect to a different legacy system, and the customer must generally logoff and logon to switch from one to the other. The delivery technology used by the two legacy systems may be different, requiring different interface standards, and different machine level languages may be used by the two system, as for example, the 96 character EBCDIC language used by IBM, and 127 ASCII character language used by contemporary personal computers. Therefore, an integrated and unified Web-based system for providing an access to a number of different legacy systems in one session is desired.
Finally, the security and entitlement features of the various legacy systems may be completely different, and vary from system to system and platform to platform. It is therefore, desired to provide connectivity to enterprise legacy systems over the public Internet, as the Internet provides access connectivity world wide via the TCP/IP protocol, without need to navigate various telephone exchanges, dialing standards or signal standards.
The popularity of the public Internet provides a measure of platform independence for the customer, as the customer can run their own Internet Web browser and utilize their own platform connection to the Internet to enable services. This resolves many of the platform hardware and connectivity issues in the customers favor, and leaves the choice of platform and operating system to the customer. Web-based programs can minimize the need for training and support since they utilize existing client software which the user has already installed and already knows how to use. Further, if the customer later changes that platform, then, as soon as the new platform is Internet enabled, service is restored to the customer. The connectivity and communications software burden is thus resolved in favor of standard and readily available hardware and the browser and software used by the public Internet connection.
An Internet delivered paradigm obviates many of the installation and configuration problems involved with initial setup and configuration of a customer workstation, since the custom application required to interface with the legacy system can be delivered via the pubic Internet and run within a standard Web browser, reducing application compatibility issues to browser compatibility issues.
For the enterprise, the use of off-the-shelf Web browsers by the customer significantly simplifies the enterprise burden by limiting the client development side to screen layout designs and data presentation tools that use a common interface enabled by the Web browser. Software development and support resources are thus available for the delivery of the enterprise legacy services and are not consumed by a need for customer support at the workstation level.